Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a geothermal power plant?

It’s a shame this was written earlier this year. In Iceland there’s an ongoing magma intrusion event near (and under) the town of Grindavik. There also happens to be a geothermal power plant not far from the town.<p>The progression of this magma intrusion, particularly beneath the power plant itself, seems like it should provide a valuable case study to test the idea presented by this article. If there ends up being an eruption under that power plant we might learn something about the advantages and potential pitfalls of this proposal.

&quot;Regardless of the specifics of the details, in the abstract, such a scheme is in some sense, possible. How should we consider it?<p>On the one hand, building a huge geothermal power station at Yellowstone would generate a large amount of (potentially cheap) electric power while simultaneously reducing a catastrophic risk. &quot;<p>&quot;On the other hand, in many ways Yellowstone is a particularly bad place to try to build such a plant. The harsh, corrosive conditions in and around the magma chamber would make drilling the wells especially difficult, and its location in the middle of nowhere would require the construction of enormous transmission lines&quot;<p>&quot;In any case, the debate is likely to remain academic for the foreseeable future. Using Yellowstone for geothermal power was made illegal by the Geothermal Steam Act of 1970&quot;<p>So the answer is likely yes, in theory. But there are lots of other places, where it makes more sense to build geothermal plants. (for energy, but also security, there are lots of other potential super vulcanos that are not as activly monitored like Yellowstone is)

The article really focused on doing this in Yellowstone, and all the problems we&#x27;d have there. I noticed the second hottest spot on the map is Southern California - which has the benefits of being a desert and close to major population that&#x27;d use the power.<p>Looking it up, we&#x27;re of course already on top of harnessing the geothermal there <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Imperial_Valley_Geothermal_Project#:~:text=Imperial%20Valley%20Geothermal%20Project%20is,The%20Geysers%20in%20Northern%20California" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Imperial_Valley_Geothermal_Pro...</a>.

As the article mentioned, the Yellowstone risk is more future than current, and is being extensively monitored, and &quot;A much bigger risk is likely large eruptions from volcanoes that we aren’t tracking and have no data for.&quot;.<p>One that is being tracked, and showing a present threat is the Vesuvius complex (which did in Pompeii), and is showing markedly increased activity [0]. I&#x27;d be more interested in proposals that might mitigate that.<p>Or more generally, studies finding out how late such a project could start and still be successful, i.e., able to extract sufficient heat from the system before it erupts, thus preventing the eruption.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.livescience.com&#x2F;planet-earth&#x2F;volcanos&#x2F;europes-most-dangerous-supervolcano-could-be-creeping-toward-eruption-scientists-warn" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.livescience.com&#x2F;planet-earth&#x2F;volcanos&#x2F;europes-mo...</a>

Depending on the depth this can be risky.<p>Switzerland had two larger projects to dig deep enough for a geothermal power plant and both got cancled due to the triggered earth quakes. [1]<p>There may be another attempt but it&#x27;s risky and I think doing this at Yellowstone maybe a lot more risky.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.srf.ch&#x2F;news&#x2F;schweiz&#x2F;strom-aus-erdwaerme-trotz-schlechtem-ruf-luzern-will-geothermie-vorantreiben" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.srf.ch&#x2F;news&#x2F;schweiz&#x2F;strom-aus-erdwaerme-trotz-sc...</a>

&gt; The authors note that given the size of past Yellowstone eruptions, and the span of time between them, the rate that energy builds below the volcano is only around 1.5 gigawatts - less heat than a typical power plant sheds. Yellowstone currently bleeds heat at a rate of about 4.5 to 6 gigawatts, mostly through heated water moving below the surface. You&#x27;d thus (theoretically) only need to increase the heat bleed by around 35% to stop energy accumulating and stop future eruptions.<p>That sounds overly simplistic. Volcanic eruptions aren&#x27;t caused by energy accumulation alone (otherwise every eruption would have the same magnitude), and AFAIK it&#x27;s mostly the accumulation of <i>gas</i> that triggers eruptions, and in many cases the gas is in fact steam…

Could we trigger an eruption by extensive drilling in&#x2F;around the magma chamber?

&gt; given the size of past Yellowstone eruptions, and the span of time between them, the rate that energy builds below the volcano is only around 1.5 gigawatts - less heat than a typical power plant sheds. Yellowstone currently bleeds heat at a rate of about 4.5 to 6 gigawatts, mostly through heated water moving below the surface. You&#x27;d thus (theoretically) only need to increase the heat bleed by around 35% to stop energy accumulating and stop future eruptions.<p>Doesn&#x27;t this say that the heat bleed is already at least 300% of what&#x27;s necessary to stop energy from accumulating?

Isn&#x27;t this basically the background to HZD: Frozen Wastes? A failing geoengineering project to keep Yellowstone stable.

Vibes of this Onion parody:<p>“Bush Vows To Remove Toxic Petroleum From National Parks”<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theonion.com&#x2F;bush-vows-to-remove-toxic-petroleum-from-national-parks-1819566089" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theonion.com&#x2F;bush-vows-to-remove-toxic-petroleum...</a>

Strong &quot;I drink your milkshake!&quot; vibes from these proposals.<p>Both of these proposals require political stability we&#x27;re unlikely to see over 600 or 50,000 years. You have to be thinking some kind of self-sustaining and monumental Pyramids-type project.

Probably could. I doubt the US has the ability to do it. CA can&#x27;t even finish the bart and they can&#x27;t even finish the high speed rail.<p>Huge infra structure projects like this are no longer feasible in terms of cost and political&#x2F;collective will in the US.<p>It&#x27;s almost a 99% guarantee this will never get built ever. At least not by the US. Any time you see speculative stuff about big projects in the US that aren&#x27;t related to the military it&#x27;s a pretty much a guarantied pipe dream.<p>The only way I see it getting built if they angle it as some kind of military thing to stay competitive with China. But that&#x27;s really a stretch.

I can&#x27;t help but wonder if the yellowstone caldera going off would also trigger the cascadian subduction zone into doing it&#x27;s thing sympathetically.

Research like this really gives me cause for optimism about our ability to find creative solutions to the biggest issues facing humanity. It can’t lull us into complacency that “someone will figure it out”, but if we can mitigate volcanic eruptions while generating gigawatts of energy (albeit hypothetical), I hope we can also find ways to mitigate the effects of climate change.

What could possibly go wrong?

I suspect it would work as well as building a giant system of dykes protected New Orleans from flooding in a hurricane.

Would pulling that much heat out of the ground help or hurt global warming?

What would it take to convert the Earth into a star?

We should take Montana and push it somewhere else.

tl;dr -- likely yes, by building geothermal power plants. This would cost billions (not trillions) of dollars. It would generate a fair bit of power, but not an extraordinary amount. They would run for (depending on how many we build) anywhere from a thousand to a hundred thousand years.<p>And if we&#x27;re not careful there&#x27;s a slight chance we could trigger an eruption instead of preventing one.

I love questions like this that feel like an XKCD